Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Someone Finally Speaks Sense

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will unveil a long-awaited package of measures to help the financial sector at 11 am New York time.

But Rogers said Geithner, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, "has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row," and so was President Barack Obama's economic advisor Lawrence Summers, who acted as Treasury Secretary at the turn of the century.

"It is mind-boggling to me," Rogers told "Squawk Box Europe."

"If I were on your show 15 weeks in a row and was wrong, you'd probably never invite me back. These guys have been wrong year after year after year consistently and here they are making the same mistakes again. This is not going to solve the problem, it's going to make it worse."


Jim Rogers lays it out in this article on CNBC.

Government can not create jobs, all they can do is spend money that you and I give them. The more they spend, the deeper in debt they get, the more money it will take to pay off that debt.

Look at it this way: Lets say I need to fix my car. I don't have the money, so I use my credit card. Not only do I have to pay back the original amount, but I now must work even harder to pay off the interest. Now imagine I make $50k per yer (for example), and I decide that I'm going to put $50k on my credit card. What do you think the chances are that I'll be able to pay that back?

Our entire income tax take in this country is about $1,000bn. We're already promising at least that with this farce of a stimulus package (only 12% of which will actually go towards stimulus according to the Wall Street Journal). How does it make sense that borrowing (or printing) all of that money will actually make anything better?

Just remember, we're trusting the guy who has been at the helm of the Fed (and is at least partially responsible for this mess) to get us out of it. When the drunk ship captain runs you aground, you don't give him another bottle of Jack and tell him to get you off the rocks.

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